The Israelites will be taking over a land that has been filled with idolatry for hundreds of years---perhaps a thousand years or more. The Lord has told the people they must destroy all the pagan altars and burn the idols in the fire. These false religious sites will be a temptation and a snare to them if they are allowed to remain.
All manner of sins have taken place at these locations, including the most abominable sin imaginable: child sacrifice. Moses closes Chapter 12 by speaking that heinous practice and we discuss why I think he took care to specifically mention that particular sin instead of listing the more common sins of the idolaters of the land of Canaan.
Moses begins the last segment of Chapter 12 like this: "The Lord your God will cut off before you the nations you are about to invade and dispossess." (Deuteronomy 12:29a) The Lord is dispossessing the tribes of Canaan from the land because of their idolatry, for you'll recall Moses telling the congregation of Israel, "It is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is going to drive them out before you. It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land; but on account of the wickedness of these nations, the Lord your God will drive them out before you, to accomplish what He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people." (Deuteronomy 9:4b-6) No one can say that they haven't sinned, so Moses took care to point out that even though the Israelites had not sinned in the same manner as the tribes of the promised land, they had sinned against the Lord in other ways. This is why Moses warned the congregation not to be lifted up in pride over the fact that they haven't sinned in the same manner as the heathens; they've still sinned. The removal of the idolaters from Canaan land is the Lord's judgment on the idolaters, and if the Israelites fall into the same sins He is capable of removing them from the land as well, which brings Moses to his next point.
"But when you have driven them out and settled in their land, and after they have been destroyed before you, be careful not to be ensnared by inquiring about their gods, saying, 'How do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same.'" (Deuteronomy 12:29b-30) Idolatry is a thing that sneaks up on a person rather than confronting them face to face. It's highly unlikely that any Israelite would enter the land, see an idolatrous image, and immediately feel compelled to bow before it. No, the old serpent who tempted Eve in the garden is far more subtle than that. He'll lure the people into idolatry by their natural human curiosity. He'll entice them to gaze upon the heathen religious sites in the land and to take note of the beauty of the temples and groves built in the name of false gods. He'll seduce them into mixing pagan rituals with the religious practices the Lord has prescribed for them by deceiving them into thinking they are serving the Lord more and in extra ways by adding to what the Lord has told them to do. When man starts making up rituals of his own, he is no longer serving God in His way, and we've been talking for several days about how we must come to God on His terms. When we abandon the decrees the Lord has laid down for us and substitute our own rites and rituals, we are straying from the truth and are engaging in idolatry by placing more faith in the works of our hands than in the grace and mercy of God, by depending on ourselves to live righteous lives instead of leaning on the Lord's strength, and by trying to forge our own path to the Lord instead of following the clear path He's marked out for us.
A person typically does not commit the most heinous sin first when straying from the Lord, yet Moses names only the most repugnant of the sins of the heathens when he issues the following warning: "You must not worship the Lord your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods." (Deuteronomy 12:31) When warning the congregation about falling into idolatry, Moses skips over all the "lesser sins", if you will, that would take place before a person sinks into the deepest depravity imaginable. Moses skips straight to the end result, and I am sure no one listening to him could fathom ever doing such a thing as falling away from the Lord, much less sacrificing a son or daughter to a false god.
Yet it did happen, for it is attested to in the book of Jeremiah when the Lord brings His case against the people for their sins and announces the coming judgment for their sins. In declaring that they have done evil in His sight, He says, "They have set up their detestable idols in the house that bears My name. They have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire---something I did not command, nor did it enter My mind." (Jeremiah 7:30-31)
During the reign of King Solomon's son, the kingdom of Israel split apart. The ten northern tribes retained the name of Israel while the two southern tribes went by the name of Judah. The northern tribes fell into idolatry sooner than the southern tribes, primarily because Jerusalem and the temple were located within the borders of the southern kingdom. We've been studying about the Lord's intention to choose a central location for worship once the people are settled in the promised land, but after the kingdom split, the king of the northern tribes did not want any of his subjects traveling to the southern kingdom for worship so he set up two primary locations for worship within the borders of his kingdom. These locations were idolatrous in themselves but we'll get into that in detail much later on in the Old Testament. The Bible tells us that Ahaz king of Judah sacrificed his son in the fire and the Bible indicates that the kings of the northern kingdom of Israel had already fallen into this practice before King Ahaz did so: "He followed the ways of the kings of Israel and even sacrificed his son in the fire, engaging in the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites." (2 Kings 16:3)
Another king of Judah, Manasseh, sank so deeply into idolatry that he sacrificed one of his sons to a false god. He began with "lesser sins" such as dabbling in astrology and the occult, then he moved on into rebuilding the pagan altars and shrines that once stood in the land, then he went so far as to set up heathen images in the temple of the Lord and in the temple courtyard. By that point he was so far gone that no sin was too grievous for him to contemplate and the Bible tells us, "He sacrificed his own son in the fire." (2 Kings 21:6a)
Difficult as it is for the congregation to imagine sinking to such a level while Moses is talking to them outside the promised land in Deuteronomy 12, we clearly see that some of the kings and citizens several centuries later did sink to this level. The book of 2 Kings shows us that such corruption was in the highest levels of government, since kings of Judah and kings of Israel (implied by the text) engaged in this atrocious sin. The segment of the book of Jeremiah which we looked at in today's study indicates this sin had permeated the populace as well. Idolatry was widespread by then and so was every practice related to it. When a nation's leader openly commits the most reprehensible and unnatural sin of all, it makes sense that this would encourage the citizens to give in to their deepest darkest inclinations. This would encourage them to copy their kings and make the grand gesture of offering to their false gods the most treasured things they possessed: their children.
The cult of Molek (spelled also as Moloch, Molech, etc.) is probably what's in view here. This was an ancient Canaanite deity and not much is known about exactly how these child sacrifices to Molek were carried out. These appear to be whole burnt offerings but whether the children were burned alive or killed first and then burned is not clear. It is believed the burning took place inside a metal stove shaped in the image of Molek who may have been portrayed in the form of a man with the head of a bull. The image is believed to have had an opening in the belly or underneath the figure where the fire was laid and the sacrifice was burned.
I don't think anyone whom Moses is speaking to in Deuteronomy 12 can imagine themselves or their descendants doing such a thing, but idolatry starts small and seduces a person into deeper and deeper sin over time. The Lord knew the day would come when some of the people would sacrifice their children if they did not hold fast to His commands, so He warns them through Moses that there is no level to which a human being cannot sink once he drifts far enough from God. Satan wasn't going to slither up to the Israelites as soon as they entered the land and ask them to bow to an idol or offer a child as a sacrifice; that wouldn't have worked. It's going to take years to wear them down. It's going to take repeated assaults of temptation. The only way to combat these assaults it to hold fast to the word of God with all they've got.
I've committed sins I never imagined myself committing. Perhaps you could say the same. And if we look back we can see that we arrived there gradually. It was a progressive thing. It probably began by praying less, studying the Bible less, or attending church less. It probably began by allowing other things to take up more and more of our time until fellowship with the Lord got pushed aside. When we allow our closeness to the Lord to gradually fade, incidents of sin become more frequent and they become worse. That's what Moses is concerned about in our passage today. Sin, like a snowball rolling downhill, gets bigger as it goes. If the people allow idols or idolaters to remain in the land, they'll eventually be drawn into idolatry themselves. It won't start out in a big way. It won't knock boldly on their front doors and demand to be allowed inside. It will sneak in through the cracks, little by little, until it has taken over. The only way to guard against it is to do what Moses urges them to do as he concludes our chapter by saying, in the words of the Lord, "See that you do all I command you; do not add to it or take away from it." (Deuteronomy 12:32)
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